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Undeclared work remains a challenge across Europe to ensure decent work, the social protection of workers, and the occupational health and safety of workers. Worker and social cooperatives across Europe have therefore developed successful models to fight undeclared work, and to uphold the rights of often vulnerable workers. With this public online event held on November 19th, CECOP “turned the lights on” the fight of worker and social cooperatives against undeclared work. The event was moderated by CECOP Secretary General, Diana Dovgan.  

Join us for informal, in-depth chats with a variety of incredible hosts. Sessions will run less than 2 hours so you will have breaks in between.

Saturday December 18

Since opening its doors more than a decade ago, Proof Bakery in Atwater Village has become a pastry powerhouse. Every weekend, a line of hungry customers stretches out the door and onto Glendale Boulevard, waiting to get their hands on cardamom morning buns, kabocha tea cakes, fresh-baked baguettes and flaky croissants. If regulars had been paying attention in August 2021, they would have noticed a new, hand-painted sign on the front door, reading, "A WORKER-OWNED COOPERATIVE."

On a recent fall morning, despite the chill in the air, workers at Taharka Brothers Ice Cream were packing a freezer truck and a van with pints of honey graham, peanut butter cup and pistachio. In the office, business metrics on retail performance, catering and home delivery moved across a screen on the wall. “It’s a really busy day,” said Detric McCoy. “Even right now, I don’t think I could run it by myself.”

He doesn’t have to.

A village has taken drastic measures to prevent it from becoming a ghost town by applying to have its pub listed as an asset of community value.

Residents of Trawden, in the Pendle district of Lancashire, feared that The Trawden Arms would be another hospitality victim of the pandemic when the search for a new landlord failed.

The composting and soil company Rust Belt Riders recently added Heinen’s grocery as a customer, adding to its growth during the pandemic. Now, it’s converting to a worker-owned cooperative to give its employees a stronger voice and a share of the profits. 

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The upsurge of worker co-operatives in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s brought in a new generation of activists to the co-operative movement, and the network of local co-operative development agencies (many, but not all, unfortunately relatively short-lived) offered a framework for that growth. The experience of those heady days has influenced many people’s subsequent political and personal lives.

And now Martin Stott, himself one of those activists, has collected together a small booklet of photographs of the workers’ co-operative movement from that time. 

“What we’re looking at now is an organisation that will help us meet the needs of our consumers. And we can work together over the long term,” Mr Parsons noted. “We can have products that the consumers actually demand, right across the board – from wholesaling to retailing on the plate.”

In the tightly concentrated U.S. chicken industry, where just four companies account for about 55 percent of all the meat sold in the country, it’s tough for a solo farm to get its products into grocery stores. Most commercial chicken farmers raise birds under a contract with one of the big brands, which supply the chicks, feed, pharmaceuticals, and other necessities and then pay a set price to the producer. Farmers assume all the risk of raising the birds, but if things go well, they get a guaranteed paycheck.

Carolina Common Enterprise is North Carolina’s cooperative development center, working toward an economy in which all people participate and prosper. We are a tax-exempt nonprofit corporation offering professional services in business development, economic organizing, and legal matters.

"Elegant and incendiary." — Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything

"A crucial resource for change-makers." — Archbishop Desmond Tutu, anti-apartheid and human rights activist

We interviewed Rhea Miller and Breton Carter of the Lopez Community Land Trust on how they combined a land trust and cooperative housing model to make affordable, environmentally sustainable housing for working people.